Potpourri: Or a Collection of Stories
by UroBoros13
Summary: This is a place to house my short stories. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad, and sometimes completely nonsensical. In the first, a bird and a moose fall in love, but like the adage goes, where do they live?
1. For All Sad Words of Tongue and Pen

Alfred has wings that, unfolded, span the length of the room. He stretches them out sometimes and the tops of them are dusky white freckled with brown. He used to say he was an eagle, and he'd gather Matthew up in his arms and try to fly away with him, laughing. They were young then, when Alfred hadn't listened to Matthew's soft protests.

(Matthew had found him on a roof top once when they were thirteen—stubborn down clung in between each feather and Alfred complained about it all the time, pouting. _It itches_, he'd say, so Matthew would shove fingers in between quills and scratch.)

(he'd said, _watch this, Matt, _and splayed his wing span and then fell off. Matthew had nearly fallen too, running after him, until he'd flown up breathless and shouted _I can fly_)

(he'd taken Matthew's hand saying, _think happy thoughts, _and Matthew had, harder than he ever had before, but he shook and cried anyway when Alfred pulled him into the air)

Alfred runs a finger up an antler. His hands come away with soft down and he scrunches up his face in a grimace. "You're shedding," he says, wipes his dirty hand down the front of Matthew's sweatshirt.

"I do that," Matthew agrees. "It itches."

"Man, you kinda got the short end of this deal. I mean, antlers are cool but—you gotta rub them against trees and stuff." Despite his words, Alfred's hand goes back up to an antler and rubs at it.

"I hope you don't think I actually rub against trees."

Alfred smiles—he has to preen sometimes, pluck at broken feathers, but he laughs at Matthew and his antlers. Matthew wants to shoot something back at him about it, but his eyes drift closed at Alfred's touch. "I think you do. Just when I'm not looking. _Oh, the embarrassment if Alfred saw me!" _He ends in a falsetto.

They're quiet for awhile. Alfred says, "I wish you could fly with me," sadly and like he's said it before. "It's beautiful up there. I could take you to this one tree, we could sit at the top—it has to be a thousand years old, Matt, with these huge, strong branches, we could watch the sunset—"

"A bird and a fish," he interrupts, placating. It's an old conversation. Alfred's hand stills on his head, near the base of an antler.

Alfred's mad, he's always mad during this, furious. He spits out, "You're not a damn fish, Matt, you're a fucking moose, you don't have gills. If you weren't so fucking scared—" he huffs a frustrated breath and then his eyes go soft. "Happy thoughts," he says, "why is that so goddamned hard?"

Matthew shrugs. It takes him away from Alfred's hand which knots into his hair before letting go. "I'm a moose," he laughs, a little hollowly. "And I do think happy thoughts. I think of you, and the way you look when you're flying. I just—a bird and a fish, Al."

"Stop saying that like it'll make me love you less! My wings can be clipped, I don't have to fly!"

But he does, Matthew wants to say. Because he's a bird and he has giant windows that he leaves open at night so he can catch the fresh air. Because he wakes up at five every morning and comes back cold and bright-eyed and talks about the sun rise, how it looked from wherever it was he perched that day. Because Matthew loves him for it, for his freedom and his wings, because he could never ground him.

He nudges his head back under Alfred's hand. "Keep scratching?" he asks. "They itch."

Alfred does.

(it goes_ a bird and a fish can fall in love, but where would they live _and that all it took Peter Pan to fly was fairy dust and happy thoughts. Matthew has no reason to fly)

(do happy thoughts extend to homes, he wonders and thinks them just in case)


	2. the Saddest are These

He thinks that if he were to rewrite this story, he'd change everything about it. When he writes it, he's young and stupid, and tragedy is a genre to compel an audience.

(he thinks that it was only five months ago and a changing in the seasons, summer fading to the crisp air of winter and he—)

He meets Alfred in the summer. In July, sweltering and miserable with heat, Matthew goes to the bay to watch a fireworks show and falls in love. It's not something he expects, or even wants, really—it's an accident that he tumbles into and by the time he gets his feet under himself again, he's too far gone to stop it.

(Alfred's hands shake, slightly, when he talks, and Matthew thinks that's the first sign, the first, ignorable sign—it's so easy to overlook, but it grows, it grows, it grows)

He's writing a book, when he meets Alfred. Draped over Matthew's shoulders, close to his ear, Alfred begs, _anything but a tragedy. _

There's enough tragedy in this world, Alfred explains. But Matthew—young and stupid—kisses the paper-fine skin of Alfred's shaking hands; _I like a good tragedy_, he says and he's thinking of Jay Gatsby stretching his arms out at the green glow of the impossible American dream, of drowning Ophelia with her long hair curling in the water. Alfred gives him a smile, a little strained—there's a shadow in his eyes and Matthew chooses not to see it.

(his funeral is quiet, his portrait smiling; there are white roses around his head that make him so much paler than he ever was in life)

Matthew writes a tragedy that gets published.

And he wishes—

(_what should I write instead, _he asks, and Alfred's arms tighten around his shoulders)

(_"And they lived happily ever after, for all their days.")_


	3. It Might Have Been

Matthew kisses the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, plucks at the grey in his hair. Alfred moves in his arms, grumbling. "I should dye it," he says, staring at their reflections—Matthew, young and vibrant, with arms wrapped around Alfred's middle; too good for him by far, and too young.

Matthew shushes him. "No, you shouldn't," he says. "I like them." In the mirror, he reaches a hand up to fix the knot on Alfred's tie.

They make an odd sort together. Matthew, who likes large worn sweatshirts and who didn't know how to tie a tie until Alfred taught him with kisses on the back of his knuckles as rewards, and Alfred, creased and folded over with the years, pressed into the straight lines of a suit.

(_I like that about you_, Matthew whispers petulantly into his neck; he twines their legs together, is hard against Alfred's thigh even though he just came, and ruts as Alfred strokes his back. _You look good in a suit_)

"No one likes the grey." Alfred snorts, doubting, but he accepts Matthew turning him around, accepts Matthew pressing him against the counter in a hard kiss that leaves him breathless.

"I _do,_" he insists, eyes wide._Believe me_, he says, _I love you_, he says. Too good for him. "Alfred—"

He kisses Matthew's words away. "I know you do." He smiles, and he knows it crinkles the lines around his eyes. "Corporate world? Maybe not. But Matthew Williams likes my grey hairs and that's good enough for me."

(he'll have his doubts tomorrow, privately—young love isn't meant to last, so he has it while he can and hopes)


	4. There's a Devil on Your Back

It wears his sister's face, when it comes for him. Death—wrapped in all her tragic beauty, face tear-stained and wrecked—kneels at his side. He thinks _don't cry _before he can stop himself, as he always had when Madeleine came to him with tears. It's a number he can count on one hand: once for every child, and once for him to take the white cloak of the kingsguard, and one more, the night of her wedding, when the king called her a different name in his wine-soaked stupor—she was a Lannister, after all, cut of their red and gold banner cloth; her tears were worth too much to shed easily.

(_Would she cry for me?_ he wonders, unable to find an answer. He hopes—because who else in the Seven Kingdoms would weep for him, kingslayer and traitor, who pushed little boys from windows in the name of _love_ and sent the whole realm plunging into enough madness that would cause even the Mad King to balk.)

"She's safe," he says instead to death. "She's safe. There's no reason to try and fool me. Madeleine is safe in the south, at Red Keep. I know she is." In the south, where she belonged. Lannister lions break their ankles in the mud of the north, he knows know.

"Is she?" Death asks, rising. Her gowns are grey, he sees now. Grey and mouth-eaten, with maggots worming out from under her long sleeves. Beautiful in death, this vision of his sister is, but terrifying. His heart gives a pang.

"She is," he says with a conviction he doesn't feel. "Are we done yet? Or am I a dead man?" And he turns his head to look at death once more, to stare at her should she pick the latter—because he could be dead, and this his only chance to ever look upon Madeleine again, and he would take it, even this poor shadow of her, if it meant he could see her one last time before dying. Only death has taken on a new figure when he looks this time, gone gaunt and sallow and hard.

It's Lady Stark, he sees now, not death at all.

She speaks with pursed lips. "If only," she says, and there's anger coloring her tone. She was a Tully before she was a Stark, Alfred remembers, and though winter has seeped into her bones and war has forged her of harder stuff, she would always be a Tully before a Stark. "I would swing the blade myself if my son gave permission for you to be executed."

"Pity he hasn't then. We'd both be better for it. I wouldn't have to suffer your presence, nor you mine." He gives her a smile, just to watch the way her shoulders stiffen at it. Starks and Tullys, he thinks to himself, their honor shoved up their asses like a stick.

She stares at him. Had he been a different man, in a different time and place, perhaps her gaze would have cowed him. But he was born Alfred Lannister, brother of Madeleine who would be queen and the only woman he had ever loved. Lady Stark could hang her righteous fury along with her son. Honor hadn't gotten her husband anywhere but the butcher's block—it hadn't earned Alfred anything but the title of kingslayer, even if the king had been mad, ready to burn the whole city down.

He ignores her, her winter and her death.

He dreams of summer, instead, and a golden-haired maid who never cries.

A/N: This is A Song of Ice and Fire fusion with Alfred as Jaime Lannister and Madeleine as Cersei.


End file.
